Where to buy a cheap, inexpensive yukata 安い浴衣を買うと？

Cheap yukatas are mass-produced, machine-sewn, tend to be more colorful, and of lower quality cotton. Nevertheless, many a very nice, are certainly adequate, and a good purchase for your first yukata. My first yukata was indeed a cheap tourist-souvenir yukata bought at the Oriental Bazaar shop in Harajuku in the 1980s for 3,500 yen, and it served me well until it shrank too short to wear anymore.

There are various types of cheap yukatas.　　浴衣のそれぞれ

Souvenir Yukata お土産の浴衣
The tourist-goods type of inexpensive yukata is basically a bathrobe or housedress intended to be worn indoors and tend to run around 3,000 to 4,000 yen, and typically come with a matching bathrobe-type belt. These are the type found at airports, the small stores at Asakusa in Tokyo, and other tourist shops like the Oriental Bazaar in Harajuku. Department stores will often have quite nice cheap yukatas in their souvenir section adjacent to the Kimono section. If you choose carefully, some of these souvenir-yukata are quite nice and can be worn as going-out yukatas if you buy a longer size (so it can be folded over at the waist for proper dressing) and buy a yukata obi to replace the bathrobe-style belt. However, this type of yukata typically doesn’t have the seam running down the back, so it will be recognizable as a cheap tourist yukata by those knowledgeable, assuming they bother to look closely and care one way or another. Yukatas are by definition 100% cotton, although there are exceptions, a polyester robe is a cheap souvenir fake kimono to be worn as a bathrobe.


Hotel Yukata　ホテル・旅館の浴衣
Yukatas are also supplied at inns and hotels in Japan to be worn in the room as sleepwear during your stay. These are basically the same type of yukata as above, but are unisex, and often have the hotel name or insignia worked into the design. Often these can be purchased at the hotel, but are not necessarily inexpensive. Please do not steal these yukata from the hotel, you will cause distress to the hotel and they will be less enthusiastic about having foreign guests stay the next time around.

　
During the Edo period (1600-1868), the houses in the Yoshiwara pleasure-quarters had their own insignia yukata for the (male) quests to wear during their stay, and the design of one of these, the “Yoshiwara-Tsunagi” design of a chain of interlocking lozenges, has since become a typical design for men’s yukata. It would be a form of iki (a droll sense of understated extravagance) to have this pattern restyled into a woman’s yukata. There is a famous ryokan inn in Kyoto, called Tawaraya, that is also famous for its insignia yukata of butterflies on a blue background, which is often purchased by female Japanese guests as a souvenir, and could be proudly worn for going-out if one had the savoir-faire. 俵屋旅館の浴衣

Recently, onsen hot-spring inns have been appealing to female customers by supplying cheap massed-produced colorful yukata so the guests can wear them about town in the area as they sample the different baths and shop for souvenirs. These are a cheap version of the regular going-out type of yukata meant to be worn in public, and are not unisex, do not have the sleeves sewn shut at the armpits as is typical of hotel yukata, but for actually sleeping, the long sleeves tend to get in the way.


Yukata for Public Wear
お出かけの浴衣
The best bet though, if you are going to be wearing your yukata outside the home, would be to purchase one of the cheap mass-produced yukata meant to be worn in public. These are often sold during the summer festival season in Japan at small stores in temple and shrine areas. They usually run for about the same price as the tourist-souvenir yukata, 3,000 to 4,000 yen. Even at the most expensive, you should be able to get a complete set including obi and geta clogs for 10,000 yen or less. Just the yukata would probably be about 3,000 yen, and even for cheap yukatas if you buy each part individually it will end up costing more.

Often Yukata-Obi sets are sold for about the same price, and these can also be found at shops in temple and shrine areas, stores such as Uniqlo, Muji, Loft, Tokyo Hands, or online. Sometimes the clothing section of your local supermarket or grocery store in Japan will have yukata sets during the summer months. At the end of the yukata season, department stores often reduce their prices for yukata, especially for the patterns that didn't sell well.


Fashionable Yukatas　お洒落の浴衣
The fashionable yukatas at department stores will generally start at about 30,000 yen and the obi at 10,000 yen. The geta clogs can be purchased for anywhere from 3,000 to 7,000 yen. A bolt of kimono fabric generally starts at 30,000 yen, and the tailoring can run from 10,000 yen for machine-sewing to 30,000 yen and up for hand-sewing in the style of a kimono.




Purchasing and Wearing a Yukata　浴衣の着付けと買い物

When choosing a size for a yukata to be worn in public, the back seam from collar to hem should be the same length as your height. A yukata for public wear is first tied at the waist so the hem reaches mid-ankle. The extra material above the waist is then folded over and down, and then held on place with another cord, before the obi is tied on top. This manner of tying on the yukata makes it fit properly to one’s body and prevents it from coming open as you move about.

You will need a slip underneath (if you are a woman, just boxers will do for a man), but a cheap cotton T-shirt and slip will do. If the store is selling the yukata full-body slip for 5,000 yen or less, just buy it and be done with it and your life will be much easier. It may seem that you can get away without a slip, but the yukata will stick to your skin and be hot and eventually smelly, let alone the dyes of a cheaper yukata sweating onto your skin. Also, for women, yukatas tend to look better and are easier to dress in, if you wear a sports bra or yukata bra.


* See also 2009 Yukata Collection　浴衣コレクション　夏２００９


* For more on how to wear a yukata:

How to Wear Yukata I: What You Need

Yukata Fashionability


* Buying cheap yukatas online:

Uniqlo
http://store.uniqlo.com/jp/CSaDisp/Wyukata

Ichiroya http://www.ichiroya.com/

Yamatoku http://www.yamatoku.jp/classic/




*Click Blogmura logo for other blogs (in Japanese) on Kimono
(and increase my ranking there!)